It still really depends how far down the stack you go. One of the better observations Eric Raymond made in his essay The Magic Cauldron was that the closer you

It still really depends how far down the stack you go. One of the better observations Eric Raymond made in his essay The Magic Cauldron was that the closer you get to infrastructure the stronger the demands become for open protocols (emphasis added): > The network effects behind TCP/IP's and Linux's success are fairly clear and reduce ultimately to issues of trust and symmetry -- potential parties to a shared infrastructure can rationally trust it more if they can see how it works all the way down, and will prefer an infrastructure in which all parties have symmetrical rights to one in which a single party is in a privileged position to extract rents or exert control. Sure you may be able to build a bespoke proprietary protocol on top of the open foundations of http or the bitcoin and etheream blockchains, but businesses will have an incentive to shop for more open systems if they are staking anything important on it. http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/magic-cauldron/magic-cauldron-10.html http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/magic-cauldron/magic-cauldr...